Things Fall Apart
by northernexposure
Summary: Ayala and Chakotay are reminded that Voyager is not a safe place to be.
1. Chapter 1

**Things Fall Apart**

 **Summary:** _Voyager_ is not the safest place to be.

 **A/N:** Yeah, so despite swearing off writing more _Voyager_ fic, after re-reading my old Ayala stories I came up with this new one. It's set about seven or eight months after the events of 'Last Words' and won't be very long. Thank you to MissyHissy3 for the beta read.

* * *

 **Chapter One**

It is astonishing how quickly things can fall apart. More than that, how often it happens. Sentient species have the habit of thinking that they're invincible. Oh, rationally they know they're mortal (as is largely the case, the Q Continuum notwithstanding) but they nonetheless behave as if they are anything but. Yet all it takes is one wrong step, one momentary lack of concentration, one ill-judged turn and – _BAM_!

 _You'd think we'd have learned by now,_ Mike Ayala thought, as he struggled to breathe in the restricted atmosphere. _We, the crew of the lost ship_ Voyager, _of all people. But no. We're as bad as any of them._

The Captain's voice echoed over comms for the third time in as many minutes. _"All hands, brace for-"_

Her command was lost beneath the shock and awe of another volley from their attackers' arsenal raking across the ship's hull. There in that corridor, Ayala had nothing to grip. The force of _Voyager_ 's skin fracturing created a concussive fist that smashed him into the bulkhead opposite. His shoulder connected hard and the next moment he was on the floor, feeling the residual judder and flinch of aftershocks through the deck. The Jeffries tube seal he'd had between his hands ricocheted first off the floor and then the ceiling, crashing its way out of his eyeline in the blinking emergency lighting of the red alert.

"Chakotay!" Ignoring the dull pain that bit his ribcage, Ayala scrambled back to his feet, crossing the shaking deck back to the Jeffries tube. His first officer and friend had been right behind him when the last blast hit. The 'lifts had been down since the attack began, the transporters not long after that. Meanwhile there had been a hull breach on deck five. Crewmembers were trapped, safe for now, but the only way to get them out was manually. Every maintenance team had been scrambled elsewhere, so Janeway sent Chakotay. Chakotay, in turn, took Ayala, probably because of the former's previous experience. Suffice it to say it wasn't the first time the two of them had crawled through a beleaguered ship in the middle of a firefight.

"Chakotay!" Ayala yelled again, coughing in the acrid aftermath of a ruptured, burning gel pack.

"Here!" came Chakotay's hoarse voice from somewhere in front of him. "Ayala, I'm-"

" _All hands, brace for impact!"_

Chakotay's words were lost, cut off first by the Captain's broadcasted warning and then by the violence of the enemy's fresh attack. As the furore of the latest strike died away Ayala heard a sharp, truncated movement somewhere ahead of him, followed by a muffled exclamation of pain. He grabbed the tube's emergency flashlight from its mooring and aimed the beam into a darkness that was brashly interrupted. Ahead of him, the tube's ceiling had crumpled, crushed like a discarded shirt, its once-smooth contours folding in on themselves. Now, it almost met the floor: almost, but not quite. Something had interrupted its progress. It took Ayala a moment to realise what it was.

There was a booted foot protruding from the wreckage.

" _Chakotay!"_

"I'm all right," came Chakotay's voice, speaking through gritted teeth. "I just can't… Argh!"

His friend's annoyance and pain filtered towards Ayala, muffled by the wall of metal between them. Mike scrambled forward on his hands and knees, knocking the flashlight along the floor in front of him as he went. When he got closer he saw that there was a narrow gap between the crushed metal and the Jeffries tube wall to his right – just enough to allow him to lie flat and wriggle forward until he was level with the trapped man.

Chakotay was lying on his back, his left leg pinioned beneath the crumpled mess of metal.

"Jesus." Mike propped himself awkwardly on one elbow and rubbed his free hand over his face, wiping away grime he hadn't even realised was there.

"Get me out of here," Chakotay said, jaw knitted hard against the pain as he tried, unsuccessfully, to shift his busted leg.

"Stay still," Mike said, before lifting his hand to hit his combadge. "Ayala to sickbay."

The EMH's answer was lost beneath the chaos of another strike. Ayala felt _Voyager_ wheel around as three decks above them, Janeway and the bridge crew tried to shake off their attackers. There was a shudder, less brutal than the previous hits – a possible near-miss. Still, Chakotay yelled in pain as the juddering motion of the ship tore at his trapped leg.

"I can't hear you, Doc," Ayala yelled. "But I've got an injured man here. Chakotay's trapped in Jeffries tube ten, section twelve. We need you here, now!"

"That's not going to be possible, Lieutenant," came the Doctor's reply. His voice was almost drowned out by background noise – sickbay was obviously full of casualties. "My mobile emitter is not functioning. He'll have to be transported here."

"The transporters are offline," Ayala said, the cold sweat of fear beginning to clot on his skin. "His leg's stuck under a ton of metal."

"Try to remain calm, Lieutenant. Is the Commander conscious?"

Chakotay tried to lever himself off the floor. "I'm here, Doctor," he said.

"Good. Try to stay that way," the EMH ordered shortly. "Lieutenant Ayala, can you free the Commander yourself?"

"Not a chance," said Ayala.

"Is there a lot of blood?"

Ayala shifted around in the narrow space to take a look at Chakotay's crushed leg. Though he could see a little blood around the wound, it wasn't enough to pool on the floor. Yet his friend's leg was clearly bearing the full weight of the metal pressing down on it. The lieutenant was left with the distinct impression that the only reason there wasn't much blood was because the metal that had caused the injury was also compressing the wound.

"Uh, no," Mike said, nausea rising in his gut. "But something tells me there will be the minute we free him. What do we do?"

"Commander Chakotay, I need you to remain as still as possible," advised the EMH. "Lieutenant Ayala, keep him conscious and warm, understand? Help will be with you as soon as possible."

"Okay," Ayala said trying to stop his voice from shaking. "Just hurry, Doc. Hurry."

He severed the connection and struggled out of his jacket, spreading it over Chakotay's chest. "You heard the EMH," he said. "No going to sleep on me, Cap, all right?"

Chakotay gritted his teeth again. "I'll be fine," he said, "just as soon as you get me out of this damn Jeffries tube."

"The Doc will work something out. Until then, let's just-"

BAM! Another strike shook _Voyager_ to her core. Ayala braced himself against the Jeffries tube wall so as not to slam against Chakotay.

"Ayala," Chakotay rasped, once the latest onslaught had passed. "You still have an order to follow. Get on with it. Get down to deck five, find a way to open that emergency bulkhead."

"And leave you here on your own?" Ayala said. "No chance. I'll report to the Captain, tell her what's going on and she'll-"

Chakotay grabbed his arm as Ayala reached for his combadge. "Don't. You're two decks away and we've already been delayed. There's no time to send anyone else. Go."

"Chakotay-"

"Don't make me order you, Lieutenant," the first officer said, through gritted teeth. "There are thirty crew members trapped down there. They need you. Just do it."

"All right. All right. I'll go. Just – stay awake, okay?"

Chakotay made the brief approximation of a smile, which was quickly eliminated by a fresh burst of pain as the ship shuddered anew. "Trust me," he muttered, "I'm not in any danger of dozing off."

Ayala nodded and began to back out of the space. "I'll hold you to that, Cap," he said. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Mike," Chakotay added, suddenly, levering himself up. "Don't report this to the Captain. There's nothing she can do and she's got enough to occupy her already. Just get the job done. Got it?"

Ayala frowned, but nodded. "Got it. Don't go anywhere."

"Funny, Ayala," he heard Chakotay mutter as he lay back down again. "You're a funny, funny man."

[TBC]


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** This references events in two previous stories, 'Observations' and 'Last Words'. Thank you to the fab MissyHissy3 for beta reading despite having a crazy busy day, and thank you to everyone who has left a review. Much appreciated.

* * *

 **Chapter Two**

Two decks. What would have taken less than ten seconds in a turbolift was taking Ayala what felt like a millennium. It'd be hard going even without the constant rattle and clash of the battle that quaked on and on around him. He continually had to brace himself against whatever was available, which was frequently nothing at all.

 _Too long_ , he thought. _This is taking too long._

He paused briefly on his hands and knees to punch at his combadge, now pinned to his turtleneck. "Ayala to Chakotay," he shouted, over the roar of yet another strike. "Hey, Cap? You still with us? Cap?"

The reply was belated and hoarse, but Chakotay's voice sounded strong enough. _"I'm here,"_ he said. _"No need to bellow like a stuck bull."_

Ayala started crawling again. He could see the end of the Jeffries tube he was in – the last one he'd have to navigate, at least in this direction. "How's the leg?"

" _Holding up the entire weight of deck three,"_ Chakotay told him. _"So how do you think?"_

"Admit it, Chakotay, you just wanted a nice lie down. Felt like leaving the real work to the big boys, right?"

" _Chance would be a fine thing,"_ his commanding officer shot back. _"Funny thing was, there weren't any big boys around at the time."_

"Yeah, yeah," Ayala scoffed, climbing out of the tube and looking left and right through the smoke-tainted air of deck five. "Sticks and stones, Cap, sticks and stones."

" _You there yet?"_

"Almost." Ayala started jogging, feeling an ache in the small of his back from too much time spent crouched on all fours. His ribs hurt too. He staggered as another blast rocked the ship, forcing him to raise his voice. "How you doing up there?"

" _Same as a second ago, Ayala. How many times are you going to ask me that?"_

"Many as it takes to stop your old-man self napping, Cap." Mike reached the corner, turned right. A lighting conduit had crashed down from the ceiling, the ends of severed power lines sparking and spitting where they hung. He edged past them, feeling their heat just inches from his legs, holding back but only just, coiled snakes waiting to strike.

" _Haven't been your Captain for four years, Mike. Stop calling me that."_

"You'll always be Cap to me… Cap," Ayala said, a brief grin flashing across his face. This had been a good-natured bone of contention between them for some time. Chakotay liked to pretend the nickname irritated him, but Ayala refused to give it up. For Mike, there was a principle involved. Chakotay had been willing to cede command to give his people the best chance of survival. To Ayala's mind, that made him more suited to the role of captain than pretty much every other person of that rank Mike had served under, present ranking officer excepted. Chakotay could have commanded _Voyager_ just as well as Janeway, had the boot been on the other foot. He might forget that sometimes, but Ayala refused to. As loyal to the current chain of command as Mike was, he often felt his friend could do with a reminder of that fact.

" _Just don't let the actual Captain hear you saying that,"_ Chakotay told him. _"She'll think I'm planning a mutiny."_

Pushing on through more smoke, Mike saw an opportunity and seized it. He waited for a cough to stop racking his lungs, and then said, "The Captain? That would be… _Kathryn_ , right?"

There was a brief silence _. "Not to you it isn't,"_ Chakotay growled.

"Oh right, I was forgetting. Only you get that privilege. Tell me how that happened again?"

There was a shocked pause. This was not a topic of conversation they had been within a parsec of since the day Janeway had been dragged back from the realms of the dead eight months earlier. They definitely weren't on teasing terms about it.

" _Knock it off, Ayala."_

"Yeah?" Mike could finally see the sealed compartment ahead of him through the acrid gloom. "And what are you going to do about it, Commander? Kick my ass with that busted leg?"

There was another pause. Then: " _All right. I get it. You figure if you get me riled up enough I'll be too pumped to pass out."_

Mike rubbed a hand over his face. "You know, you can sometimes be quite smart. For a knucklehead, anyway."

" _Feel that wind, Lieutenant? You're sailing pretty close to it."_

"That reminds me," Ayala said, reaching the airlock and flinging open the manual controls. The panel was so hot it scalded the skin of his hands. He gritted his teeth, carried on anyway. If it was hot out here, god only knew what it was like beyond. _No time, no time…_ "That planet you were trapped on. Remember it? Where it was just you and the Captain for three-"

" _I remember,"_ Chakotay said, cutting him off.

Ayala punched in an override code. It didn't work. He wiped a hand over his face again, feeling the sweat slick against his palm. _Don't panic. Thirty people. Thirty-one. Gotta keep calm. Keep calm…_ "I keep meaning to ask you. Did you build her a boat?"

Another silence. _"A boat?"_

The code still didn't work. Something red flashed on the panel. _Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it…_

"Yeah, a boat," Mike managed. His eyes were streaming, raw from the smoke. "You know the kind of thing. Made of wood, floats on water-"

" _Yeah,"_ Chakotay interrupted. _"I know the kind of thing. And no, I didn't."_

Another code. Another failure. Another red light. Ayala swore under his breath, coughed again. The metal was getting hotter and hotter.

" _Why?"_

Mike gave up on the keypad and started ripping open the panel beside it instead. He tried to take a breath and almost gagged in the failing air. "Uh – You remember when I got stuck in that turbolift with her? Well, we got to talking. Something she said – I kind of got the impression you had."

The panel came away and crashed to the deck amid Chakotay's prolonged silence. Ayala stared at the mess behind it. There was a lever he could hand-crank, but-

"Cap? You still there?"

" _I was going to,"_ Chakotay said. _"I showed her the plans for one. But then_ Voyager _came back."_

The manual lock just wouldn't shift. _Too long,_ Ayala thought, desperation setting in as he strained every muscle he had against it. _This is taking too long, too long._ "R-Right."

" _She remembers that?"_

Mike slammed his hand against the panel in frustration. "Yes. Yes, Chakotay, Kathryn Janeway remembers that. So that's something for you to think about."

" _What's that supposed to mean?"_

Ayala straightened up, looking around for something to lever the mechanism with. He was suddenly and ferociously angry. The ship was still shaking with a fresh strike every few minutes; there were thirty crew members dead or dying behind this damn bulkhead; his best friend was jammed under a pile of wreckage and in danger of bleeding out; he, Mike Ayala, could die here, now, a million miles from his wife and children and they'd never even know about it, and-

"DAMN IT," Ayala roared. "What do you _think_ it's supposed to mean?" He spotted a chunk of wrecked bulkhead and lunged for it. "Seventy-five _thousand_ light years, Chakotay. The two of you got blown 75,000 light years into a different damn galaxy from the rest of the human race and what did you find? Each other. And what the hell do you do about it? Nothing. NOT A DAMN THING. Even though every day shit like this happens. Even though every damn day, every damn _minute_ could be your last – her last – OUR LAST. Just because – what? You're too chicken to even give it a _try_?"

He could hear Chakotay's anger emanating through the comline. _"You are WAY out of line, Lieutenant."_

Ayala picked up the metal baton and swung around with it. "Yeah? Well, hell, why don't you just give me a fucking court martial from that Jeffries tube of yours, Commander? Right this second I've got to get this door open. So just shut the hell up, think about Kathryn Janeway, and try not to _goddamn die_."

[TBC]


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay. Many thanks to MissyHissy3 for the beta read.

* * *

 **Chapter Three**

The lever snapped back with a violence that almost popped Ayala's shoulders right out of their sockets. He fell backwards and was still righting himself when the emergency bulkhead began to open. From beneath it poured more smoke, thick and noxious. Then, amid the smoke, he saw shapes. They staggered towards him, knees and elbows and throats screaming for air as they coalesced into the crew. Some were walking, others were being dragged along by their fellows. Mike waded forward, one arm up over his nose and mouth, the other grasping, pulling, helping.

Thirty souls escaped through the hatch, some wounded but all still alive. Ayala grabbed the nearest able-bodied ensign, a willowy kid of 24 in engineering colours called Nick Sartoni. Together they forced the bulkhead shut again.

 _"EMH to Lieutenant Ayala."_

Mike took a breath and then answered the call. "I'm here, Doc. You got someone with Chakotay yet?"

 _"That last attack cut Sickbay off. The team were en route, but now they're trapped. They're working on getting through as fast as they can."_

Ayala rubbed his face. "I've got more wounded for you here."

" _Send them to the mess hall. Neelix is standing by."_

"Got it," Mike said. "I'm going to get back to Chakotay." He turned to Sartoni. "You can get them to the mess hall?"

"Aye, sir."

Ayala nodded. "We haven't taken a hit in what – four minutes?" He said. "Maybe we're over the w-"

The strike that silenced his words was the worst by far. Mike was knocked off his feet, careening down the hallway in a tangle of arms and legs. His first thought was that the last of _Voyager_ 's shields must have given up the ghost and they were done for. His tailbone slammed against the bulkhead, shooting raw pain up through his spine to his already bruised ribs. He gasped, seeing stars as his head followed the example of his back less than a second later. He lay there a moment, thinking he was blind or maybe already dead. But then someone was grabbing his arm and helping him up. It was Sartoni, who had followed him down the now pitch-black corridor – of his own volition or in a similar fashion to Ayala, Mike wasn't sure – but the Ensign was at least in better shape.

"I'm fine," Ayala rasped, pulling away. "Get the others to the mess hall, Ensign. That's an order." He was hitting at his combadge before Sartoni had even acknowledged the order. "Ayala to Chakotay."

There was no answer. Mike tried again. "Ayala to Chakotay."

Still nothing. Mike staggered into a run, heading back the same route he'd come. He was hauling himself back into the Jeffries tube when Chakotay finally answered.

"… _here…"_

His voice was hoarse and unsteady, but it was there. "Cap! Had me worried for a moment there! How's it going?"

It took another moment for Chakotay's faint reply to reach him. Ayala told himself the delay was the comm. system's fault, that it was damaged and sparking out, at the same time knowing he was lying to himself.

"Cap?" he said, anxiety bunching in his gut. "Haven't told me how you're doing, buddy… Come on now – the Chakotay I know'd be building himself up to swing a right hook at me right now, not sulking. Yeah?"

" _A… already…"_ came Chakotay's voice, and then petered out.

Ayala scrambled out of the end of one Jeffries tube into a deck junction point and threw himself at the ladder, climbing as fast as he could. "Already what, Chakotay? Come on, stay with me. Already what?"

Chakotay coughed, a painful, hacking sound that made Mike wince. _"Already gone three rounds today,"_ he managed, in little more than a whisper. _"Not going to…"_

He faded out completely and Ayala panicked. "Chakotay? Chakotay!" He stabbed at his combadge again. "CHAKOTAY!"

" _-here,"_ came the reply, at last. _"That's… Commander Chakotay to you. Ensign."_

Mike let out a strangled laugh of relief. "Oh yeah? So I got a demotion in the court martial, eh?"

" _I was… all for… spacing your sorry excuse for an ass," Chakotay_ said hoarsely. _"But the Captain… pointed out that… we're already… understaffed."_

Mike scrambled out of one tube and across a corridor straight into another. His ribcage felt as if it was on fire. Every breath was murder, but he figured it was a good two minutes before he'd be back where he needed to be. "Smart lady. So she was there at the hearing, huh? Guess that means you must have grown a pair and told her the truth."

There was a pause. _"She already knew,"_ Chakotay whispered. It was more than a breath than a whisper, fading before it even reached the end.

"Cap?" Ayala reached deck three, section twelve, sliding into the corridor. He could see the Jeffries tube that had crushed Chakotay alive right ahead of him. "Cap?" He scrambled into the tube. "Chakotay, I'm here, I'm back…"

The landscape of his friend's prison had changed. The metal pinning him down had moved – not much, but enough to make it even more difficult to reach him. Ayala swore, then flattened himself on his belly, ignored his screaming ribs, and pushed himself forward.

Chakotay was unconscious, his head lolling against the floor. "Cap?" Mike said, "Chakotay?" He drew level with the injured man and then patted Chakotay's face. His fingers left smears on his friend's skin. For a second Ayala couldn't work out what it was. Then he realised his hand was covered in blood. He'd crawled through it.

"Oh shit." Ayala levered himself up and looked down. His uniform was wet with it. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…" he managed to get an angle on Chakotay's pinned leg, then stabbed at his combadge. "Ayala to sickbay!"

" _Sickbay here. Please state the nature of the-"_

"Where the hell is that medical team?" Ayala yelled at the EMH. "Chakotay's bleeding out!"

" _They're on their way, Lieutenant. They're having to do it the hard way."_

"He's not going to make it," Ayala yelled. "Do you understand me? He's not going to-"

The ship stuttered slightly. It wasn't violent: a fraction of a second of weightlessness followed by stability. _Voyager_ going to warp. There was a flicker and the emergency lighting spun up, washing the tube with blue light.

"That's the engines," Ayala said, relief washing over him like sickness. "B'Elanna's got the engines up. What about the transporters?"

" _Standby,"_ said the Doctor, and then, _"No. Transporters are still offline. They'll be there, Lieutenant. They'll do everything they can. Until then – do what you can."_

Ayala struggled around again. "Chakotay," he said, sharply. "You've got to wake up. Talk to me, Cap. Come on, you can do it. I didn't let you drag me across an entire goddamn galaxy so you could die on your back, you hear me?" He grabbed his jacket, still lying across Chakotay's chest, a sudden burst of fresh adrenaline tracing his veins as he ripped it arm-to-arm. "If you're going to die out here, you're going to die on your feet, got it?" He forced the tattered strip of his uniform jacket under Chakotay's injured leg. Whether it was the pain or his words that got through, Mike didn't know, but his friend uttered a low, guttural moan. "That's it," Ayala said, winding the fabric above the wound and pulling tight. "Yeah, that's it." He tied a knot, making sure it bit as hard as he could force it. "Now stay with me, Cap. People are coming, okay?"

Chakotay's eyes struggled to open, but they were rolling back in his head, his skin a sallow, unnatural hue that had nothing to do with the emergency lighting.

"I reckon we're out of the woods," Ayala said. "No strikes for at least three minutes and we just jumped to warp. Janeway got us out of the firefight. Okay? So you just gotta hold on now. Doc will have you fixed up in no time."

Chakotay lifted a shaky hand. Ayala gripped it, hard. His friend was trying to form words, his lips moving silently, his eyes still shut.

"Don't," Ayala said. "Okay? You're fine. You're just fine…"

A sound echoed up the Jeffries tube. "Lieutenant Ayala?"

"I'm here," he called back, then looked at Chakotay. "Help is here, Cap. I'm gonna get out of the way, but I'll be right here. I'll be right here."

He scrambled backwards. Two battered-looking Ensigns with medical uniforms waited at the tube's opening. "Get in there," he said, roughly. "Get in there and do something before it's too late."

Mike watched as they crawled inside, but he knew. What could they do? Cut Chakotay's leg off, maybe, but he'd already lost so much blood. Ayala looked down at himself. He was drenched in it. If they'd had transporters, if they'd got out of there sooner, if the EMH hadn't been stuck in sickbay, if he'd thought to tie off a tourniquet straight away, if – _If, if if…_

Ayala put a hand up to his face. It was shaking. He pressed it to his combadge. Tried to make his voice work properly.

"Lieutenant Ayala to Captain Janeway."

" _Janeway here."_

"Captain…" he faltered.

" _What is it, Lieutenant? We're a little busy."_

Mike could see the two medics crammed into the Jeffries tube, frantically trying to do something – anything. He swallowed. "Captain, you're needed on deck three."

" _Where's Commander Chakotay?"_

Mike tried to say something else. He failed. The combadge transmitted dead air.

" _Lieutenant?"_

When he spoke, his voice didn't sound like his at all. "Deck three, Jeffries tube ten, section twelve."

This time the silence was hers. In it their understanding became mutual.

" _I'll be there when I can,"_ she said.

[TBC]


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** Thank you to MissyHissy3 for the beta read.

 **Chapter four**

* * *

It was another thirty minutes before Janeway appeared in the lingering smoke at the end of the corridor. Ayala watched as she walked a straight line towards him, a small figure coming through the apocalypse with her head up and her jaw set. As she got closer he saw that she was as battered as the rest of the ship. An abrasion on her cheek had stopped bleeding of its own accord and she held her right arm stiffly, as if moving it was painful.

Her face was blank, although to Ayala it seemed carefully so. He could still see the post-battle tiredness lingering in the lines around her eyes. The Captain came to a stop in front of him, her gaze straying to the entrance of the Jeffries tube beside him. From inside came the subdued sound of the medics' voices.

"Ayala," she said, her voice even rougher than usual. "Report."

"Commander Chakotay is still trapped," Mike told her. "He's drifting in and out of consciousness. They've stemmed the blood loss, but they've already had to bring him back twice. They need to get him out of there but," he shook his head, "they can't, not without the transporters."

Janeway met his gaze with utterly clear eyes. "Amputation?"

Mike looked away. "Without being able to transport him to sickbay straight after, they said they'd probably lose him, Captain - heart failure or further blood loss. They say his body has already taken about as much strain as it can stand."

Janeway dropped her gaze to his chest. She seemed to notice the state of his uniform for the first time. Chakotay's blood had sunk into it from breastbone to hip, from shoulder to wrist. Ayala saw something quiver in her then, just for a second. She raised her hand to her combadge and tapped it.

"Janeway to the Doctor."

" _Yes, Captain?"_

"I'm at deck three, Jeffries tube ten, section twelve. Why no stasis chamber, Doctor? Amputate, then place the Commander inside it until we can get him safely to Sickbay."

" _There's a stasis chamber en route, Captain. Unfortunately, as with everything else, getting it there without a working transporter and when there are so many areas of_ Voyager _that are damaged is taking time."_

Janeway flicked her gaze to the wall opposite, staring at it with unblinking intensity. "Understood."

" _Captain, I understand you need treatment yourself-"_

"Later Doctor," the Captain said, curtly. "Janeway out."

Janeway turned to face Ayala again, her gaze tracing the journey of Chakotay's lost blood across his uniform. "Suggestions, Lieutenant?"

"Only one."

She raised an eyebrow. "Out with it, Lieutenant. This is no time to prevaricate."

Ayala rubbed a hand over his eyes. "You… should be in there. Captain." When he dropped his hand, Janeway was staring at him. "With Chakotay."

"I won't be any use," she said. "It's the medics he needs."

"No," Mike told her, softly. "It isn't."

She blinked. Her jaw clenched, hard.

"The medics can't do any more," said Ayala, forging on, keeping his voice low. "But you-"

She looked away.

"You should see him, Captain," Mike told her. "Before… before it's too late."

Her eyes were back on him again, flashing blue. "We are not going to lose him, Lieutenant. B'Elanna's doing everything she can to get the transporters back online and-"

"With respect, Captain, we've already lost him. Twice. Both times we were lucky to get him back. Next time…"

Janeway took a breath and squared her shoulders, wincing as the movement jarred her arm. Ayala suspected it was broken or at least fractured. It might have taken her 30 minutes to get there, but she hadn't spent any longer on the bridge than was absolutely necessary to make sure _Voyager_ was in a safe position. Then she'd come straight here. Because she already knew what he'd just told her aloud.

The Captain turned to the Jeffries tube, her eyes roving restlessly over the narrow contours of Chakotay's resting place. A small, deep frown line had formed between her eyes.

"We could be anywhere, couldn't we?" she said, so softly that Mike wasn't even sure he was meant to hear the words. "Under an ice cap, for instance. We all travel so far and yet sometimes… sometimes I think we go nowhere at all."

Ayala frowned. "Captain?"

She shook her head dismissively, then raised her voice to call to the medics. "Gentlemen, could you give me a few minutes?"

The two men backed out of the tube one by one. Janeway nodded to them both and then began to crawl inside, bunching her injured arm up against her body in an attempt to keep it out of the way. Ayala turned to the two ensigns, then nodded down the corridor.

"I need you to check out that workstation. It's been flickering on and off since I've been standing here. It might still be functional. If it is, see if you can stablize it. With it running properly we'll be able to monitor the progress of the team with the stasis unit."

"Aye, sir."

Mike watched as they walked away. Behind him he could hear Janeway shuffling slowly forward on her belly. _It must hurt,_ he thought, _to crawl under that wreckage with a broken arm folded under you. It must hurt like hell, and in more ways than one._ He turned and put his back to the open tube. The corridor was empty, nothing but the emergency lighting and the occasional puff of residual smoke drifting in the air. _The recyclers must be doing overtime,_ he thought, _I can breathe better now._

"Chakotay? Can you hear me?"

Mike tried not to listen, but her voice floated to him anyway. It made him glad he'd sent the medics out of earshot. Without meaning to, he strained to hear Chakotay's response. At first Mike thought he hadn't answered at all, but Janeway's next words told him otherwise.

"Yes," she said. "It's Kathryn. I'm here. I'm here. Try to stay with me, Chakotay. Please."

There was another moment of silence, in which Ayala thought he heard a low murmur, punctuated by a cough. And then:

"Ayala told me to come," she said, and then listened for an answer before adding, "No – he was right to. Otherwise our post-incident de-brief would be unconscionably delayed, wouldn't it?"

Whatever Chakotay whispered in response made Janeway laugh, just barely.

"No, I'll have to do without coffee. It's a pity – unlike you, no thoughtful crewmember has come along and piled me up with medical blankets. The environmental controls need fixing and my hands are _freezing_."

There was the sound of movement, a slight rustling, followed by a murmur.

"Yes," Janeway whispered. "That is better." She cleared her throat. "Anyway, Commander, since you somehow conspired to be absent from the bridge throughout most of the recent altercation, I feel it incumbent upon me to fill you in on the details. You'd better listen closely. There may be a test later."

There was another inaudible murmur, another slight laugh from Janeway, and then she began to speak. She spoke to him of the firefight and of the ship's damaged systems. She talked about the detoured course _Voyager_ had been forced onto in order to find safe space. She spoke of the hull breaches, the state of the anti-matter containment tanks, what maintenance teams had been dispatched and where they were. She talked of the things they would have discussed had they been sitting across her desk in the ready room instead of lying beneath a tangle of metal waiting for one of them to die. She spoke just so Chakotay could hear her voice, punctuating the stream of her speech with quiet questions that made sure he stayed present and conscious.

There was absolutely nothing inappropriate about anything she said, and yet Ayala felt as if he were hearing a conversation of a far more intimate nature. They knew each other, he realised then. They knew each other inside out. He remembered Chakotay's attempt to order him into silence at Janeway's own sickbed. _I know her,_ _Ayala,_ he'd said _._ Mike hadn't believed him. He thought back to that day on Half Dome, too. _I'm not the one holding back._ Mike hadn't believed that, either. It takes two to tango, but it only takes one to ask for the dance, and sometimes the question is all that's required.

But now, listening to this most normal of conversations in this most abnormal of circumstances, Ayala realised that he just hadn't understood what his friend had been telling him. It wasn't the unknown that held them back. It was the known.

" _Doctor to Lieutenant Ayala."_

The EMH's voice punctuated Mike's thoughts like a gunshot. Janeway fell silent, listening. "Go ahead, Doc."

" _B'Elanna thinks she's done enough to get the transporters up long enough for one transport,"_ the Doctor said. _"We've got to be quick."_

Mike's heart leapt. "Got it."

" _I'm standing by. Keep this comline open."_

Ayala turned to the tube. "Captain…"

"I heard," she called, and then lowered her voice. "Commander. Seems that you're getting out of here. I'll see you in sickbay."

Mike saw Janeway free her hand from where Chakotay had clasped it against his chest. Her fingers drifted across his cheek, just as the blue shimmer of the transporter beam gripped him. A moment later, he was gone.

Ayala helped her out of the tube, her injured arm still held stiffly against her chest. Janeway turned away from him and they stood there for a moment in silence. Then in one jerky, sudden movement the Captain reached out and gripped Mike's arm. She still didn't look at him. Through her fingers Mike could feel her shaking.

The moment passed as quickly as it had come. Janeway let go of his arm and straightened her shoulders, turning to look at him with a ghost of a smile beneath very bright eyes.

"I have to get back to the bridge."

"Captain – your arm –"

"It can wait. I've been away too long already. Well done today, Ayala. The crew on deck five have you to thank for their lives." She glanced at his chest. "You look as if you've taken a knock or two, Lieutenant. Best get down to sickbay yourself." Janeway began to walk away. After a few paces she turned. "Ayala-"

"Yes, Captain?

She tipped her head slightly, as if somehow embarrassed. "Thank you."

Mike nodded and gave her a small smile, but didn't reply. He didn't think anything else needed to be said.

[TBC]


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Big thank you as always to the fab MissyHissy3 for beta reading.

* * *

 **Chapter Five**

Post-battle on _Voyager_ , the crew moved around like somnambulists. A ship takes a long time to heal. There were no relief crews coming, no sister ships to take up the wing, no tricked-out space docks full of parts and engineers awaiting their arrival. There were only the same 150 crewmembers that had been in the thick of the firefight, and they were tired. Most were hurt in some way or another. Those who were ambulatory kept working regardless: it wasn't as if they had any choice. Neelix, his mess hall overrun by casualties, somehow still managed to make batches of soup and deliver them to the work parties spread out stem to stern. For once, no one found anything to complain about in its content. Their gratitude was as palpable as the slowly dissipating smoke in the ship's beleaguered corridors.

Mike ignored his cracked ribs. He was breathing pretty well, so he figured he didn't have a punctured lung, in which case they'd wait a few more hours. It wasn't as if he hadn't dealt with worse during his time in the Maquis. In fact, this was where those members of _Voyager_ 's crew who had first come aboard as renegades generally faired better than their Starfleet-trained counterparts. _Work hard, work long, work hurt, work hungry_. A mantra made more of necessity than ethos, but not one easily forgotten by either mind or muscle.

Ayala tried not to think too much about Chakotay, fighting for his life in sickbay. He'd spoken briefly to the EMH following the first officer's arrival there. Surgery would be difficult and ongoing, the doctor had told him. He'd also left the Lieutenant in no doubt that his presence was only required if Ayala himself required treatment. _'Sickbay is too busy for well-wishers'_ , were the hologram's exact words.

He wondered if Janeway was having the same thoughts as he was. He saw her two or three times as he ricocheted between the bridge and whatever was next on the never-ending list of repairs. She was always on her feet and always had a PADD or a tool in her hand, even when Tom Paris physically forced her to a standstill just long enough to treat her arm. Ayala watched as the pilot helped her peel off her jacket. He had to cut her roll-neck at the forearm to get to the wound. The arm beneath was blue-black and badly swollen. Janeway barely seemed to notice, conducting a conversation with someone via her combadge and reading something on the PADD in her hand as Tom worked.

She reminded him of Chakotay. The thought made him smile.

Mike was working on the servos on the doors to turbolift two when his combadge burst into life.

" _Doctor to Lieutenant Ayala."_

"Ayala here."

" _I thought you'd like to know that Commander Chakotay is out of surgery, Lieutenant."_

Relief hovered around Mike's heart, but he knew better than to let it settle. "How did it go?"

" _Well. With a less competent surgeon the Commander might have been in trouble, but luckily he had me. I've saved his leg. He's still got a long road to recovery ahead of him, but at least he'll be on it with both feet."_

Mike rested his grubby forehead on his wrist, suppressing the bubble of involuntary laughter that rose up from his gut. "Great, Doc. That's great. Have you told Captain Janeway?"

" _She was first on my list, obviously,"_ said the EMH. _"And let me pre-empt your next question by saying yes, you can visit, but not for another few hours. I've still got patients to deal with here, but most of them will have been discharged by 2000 hours."_

"Got it," said Ayala. "Thanks, Doctor. For everything."

Once the conversation had ended, Mike let the humming silence of _Voyager_ crowd in. He sat back on his haunches and let the tiredness wash over him as he stared blindly at the broken servo junction he'd been working on a moment earlier. He hadn't realised just how afraid he'd been until he knew for certain that there was no longer anything of which to be afraid.

After a few minutes, he collected himself and went back to work.

* * *

The crew did good service during the hours that followed. The transporters came back online. Three out of the full complement of turbolifts were back in operation. The lighting was back to normal on most decks and running at half-power rather than emergency on the rest. The replicators were functioning and the Captain issued a ship-wide announcement that there would be a ration amnesty so that every crewmember could have one hot meal of their choosing regardless of their credit status.

At 2000 hours, Ayala stepped out of the turbolift on deck five and entered a well of calm. Now that the ship was out of imminent danger, shift patterns were beginning to reassert themselves. They would be shorter for the next two days: all hands would be on a six-hours-on, six-hours-off cycle to allow everyone to catch up on much-needed rest. As a result, the frenetic activity that had filled the corridors for the past 12 hours had quieted. The hallways of _Voyager_ were avenues of muted calm. Mike passed a couple of patched-up crewmembers as he entered sickbay but found that the Doctor had been true to his word. The place was very nearly empty.

Chakotay was in the smaller single-occupant room that doubled as an operating theatre. There was no sign of the EMH as Ayala walked through sickbay. Mike thought he'd probably deactivated himself to give engineering a chance to work out what was wrong with his mobile emitter. Ayala briefly contemplated reactivating him to ask for an update before he walked into his friend's room, but decided against it on the grounds that, hologram or not, the EMH deserved and likely needed as much post-incident R&R as the rest of them.

Mike almost walked straight into Chakotay's room before he registered the scene in front of him. He just managed to bring himself to a halt before he crossed the threshold and then backtracked a few steps into the dim light beyond the observation window.

Chakotay lay on a biobed, his leg encased in what looked like a pressure cylinder. The top half of the bed was elevated and Ayala could see that his friend was awake. There was another person in the room, too. She sat at his left side, most of her body hidden from Ayala by the angle of the biobed. Kathryn Janeway had pulled a chair up beside her unconscious first officer, probably intending to be present when he came around after surgery. Her own exhaustion had apparently finally won out over her will, however, because at some point she must have leaned her crossed arms against the space at his side, rested her head against them and then fallen asleep. From where Ayala stood he could see that she hadn't had time to change her uniform and still wore the one Tom Paris had cut open in order to heal her injuries.

Mike wondered how long Chakotay had been awake. His friend lay, unmoving, watching his commanding officer's dirt-streaked, sleeping face. Then as Ayala watched, Chakotay slowly gathered up one of the blankets arranged across his body and drew it over her. As gentle as the movement was, Janeway woke, lifting her head and pushing her hair out of her eyes. When she saw that Chakotay was awake, she smiled. It was an expression of such brilliance that Mike even felt his own heart catch. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at Mike that way. More than four years, in fact. Chakotay reached out with one hand and cupped her face, a reaction that Mike had no problem understanding at all but that seemed to take both of them by surprise. Janeway let his hand linger there for a moment and then reached up to pull it away, holding his hand in both of hers. They began to talk, quietly, and Mike knew that he had already watched for too long. So he turned and left sickbay as quietly as he had arrived.

* * *

"I didn't ever want her to have to see me like that."

Chakotay was sitting on the sofa in his quarters, his healing leg resting on the coffee table. It had been two weeks since the first officer's surgery and he'd been discharged from sickbay but had yet to return to active duty. The enforced inaction was not playing well with the man.

Mike watched his friend's face. Chakotay wasn't looking at him, focusing instead on the chessboard they'd set up between them. It was the first time the subject of what had happened in that Jeffries tube had arisen. Ayala had begun to think that that they'd never broach it at all.

"It'd take more than a bit of blood to scare Kathryn Janeway," Mike observed. "Pretty sure she's seen a hell of a lot worse than that in her time."

Chakotay frowned, then struggled out of his seat and used his crutch to head for the replicator. "Yeah," he said. "She has."

Mike waited for Chakotay to elaborate, but he didn't. "Things were pretty bad there for a while, Cap. There were a few moments where I was convinced you weren't going to make it. You really think it would have been better for her not to see you at all?"

He could hear that Chakotay's tea had materialised, but his friend didn't turn around. He stayed there, his big shoulders hunched, his head dipped as if he was trying to avoid something flying low over his head.

"I know you think that what happened in that firefight… that it should make a difference," Chakotay said then, his voice quiet. "That it's a reason that we should just… dive in. But that's not how it works, not for her. It does the opposite."

Mike frowned, picking up a fallen pawn and turning it around in his fingers. "You're saying she thinks that the fact that any of us could die out here at any time… that's a reason not to…" he trailed off.

"Yes. And I know that you don't get that, that you don't understand why-"

Mike shrugged and put down the pawn. "Doesn't matter if I understand it. Do you?"

Chakotay turned around, looking out of the window at the starscape beyond with a frown. "Yes. I'm not saying it's easy to accept, but I get it. Because if that had been her, instead of me… if one day I had to watch her die…" he broke off and shook his head. "I don't know how I would cope with that. And she's been there before, Mike. I don't ever want to be the one to put her back there again."

Mike nodded. "Okay."

Chakotay offered a slight smile and made his way back to the sofa. "You were a real jerk, letting go at me the way you did."

"I know. Had good intentions though, you know?"

"Yeah, I know. And you know what? That thing you said, about us coming 75,000 light years and finding each other… I'd never thought of it like that."

Mike nodded. "It's pretty astronomical," he paused. "Actually, it's _literally_ astronomical. That's got to mean something, right?"

Chakotay dropped stiffly into his seat. "Hope so."

"You willing to wait to find out?"

"Not sure I've got a choice."

Ayala nodded. "Just one of those things, right?"

"Yeah," said Chakotay. "Just one of those things. Is it your move, or mine?"

"Yours," Mike told him. "It's all yours, Cap."

[END]

 **Additional A/N:** Readers that read this series the first time I posted it will know it originally ended with a post-Endgame story called 'Onwards', which I will re-post at some point. Huge thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed – I'm astonished at how many comments/faves and follows this little story has had! Much appreciated.


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